1. Field of the Invention
The objective of the present invention is to simplify the Service Switching Point (SSP) of current Intelligent Network (IN) architecture to allow ease of implementation, and to provide a future-proof IN architecture without the constraints of Capability Sets or similar limitations.
2. Description of the Related Art
Public network exchange requirements are reviewed as are the requirements of the intelligent network components which enable access to IN services.
Typical IN services are described but details of IN service design and the provision of the Service Management platform which installs, maintains and updates the services are not provided. The Service Basement requirement is simplified in that each service is self-contained and there is no common component that accumulates the complexity of all services, as arises in the Service Control Point (SCP) of conventional IN.
Intelligent Network services are available to any terminal connected to the network; subscriber lines, Private Branch Exchange (PBX) lines, Centrex extensions or Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) terminals The description includes the means by which IN services are made available to terminals on analogue exchanges. Subscribers wishing to participate in interactive type IN services need a push-button telephone or equivalent facility.
Intelligent Network services are provided in such a manner that the whole of the intelligence is in the intelligent service itself. Public exchanges are required to do very little more than identify IN service codes (triggers) and send a simple message to their local IN Service Router.
All connections to intelligent services are established and controlled by the intelligent service terminal itself, his enables the avoidance of "hacking" and other types of unauthorized access; enabling the service to configure itself as it will before connecting to the caller and avoiding the need to allocate public network addresses to all the facets of intelligent network services.
News services and additional equipment may be connected to any convenient point in the public network without even notifying the adjacent exchanges. All that is required to introduce a new service is to not the local exchanges of the new service code, ie. set the tagger condition. Existing services may be enhanced or even completely restructured with no effect whatever upon the public network equipment